When it came to home entertainment and communications budgets for the next year, 69% of the households said they would either keep or increase their spending on home broadband.

Other services, including pay TV and landline phones, were not so lucky. But mobile data plans were most vulnerable.

Nearly one-half of respondents (48%) said they would drop the mobile data services completely if forced to scale back, while a further 17% would move to a lower-tier plan to save money.

“These results suggest that, while American consumers consider home broadband service to be a vital utility, they see mobile data service as simply a â€˜nice to have,â€™” said David Mercer of Strategy Analytics.

According to The Pew Internet & American Life Project, 22% of US adults cut back on mobile service in the year prior to March/April 2009 to save money. Just 9% canceled or cut back on Internet subscriptions.